The Coolest Mystery that You'll Never Fully Understand

Yesterday morning turned a little crazy around our house.  My daughter called me in full blown panic.  She is being transferred to her new post and she has to drive herself.  Her Jeep was acting up again and she needed to find a place to live because there is no housing available on base.  All of this would normally be a minor nuisance except for the fact that she moves next week!  I don't care how old your children get-when something comes up, fully mommy mode kicks in because once a mommy, always a mommy!  Even if they are far away, somehow you find a way to help!  I spent the morning on the Internet and cell phone.  I do believe today will be a much calmer, quieter day-although there is still a lot of work to do!  There's a plan in place now to make the transition smooth!

Yup, my daughter is beautiful, intelligent, poised and level headed but every once in awhile she still needs her mommy!  I look at my children and am amazed sometimes because I wonder how in the world I managed to raise them!  Parenthood is part art, part science and a whole lot of mystery!  That little baby grew and became an amazing individual and in the whole scheme of things you're not really sure how that happened!

In The Message paraphrase Ecclesiastes 11 says this:

"Just as you'll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman, so you'll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does."

Parents can relate to that statement!  Scientists and doctors can explain the process and National Geographic can create shows that illustrate the mechanical points, but that forming life is still a miraculous mystery that we will never fully understand.  As we come in to Advent I think about Mary and what it must have been like for her and how gutsy and courageous she was in saying yes to God's plan.  She knew, going in, that this child was going to be unique and special.  (All parents believe that each child will be unique and special but Mary heard it from an angel).  I doubt that she could even fathom just how things would turn out.  If she knew that 33 years later, the child that she carried, raised and nurtured was going to have to brutally die on the cross and that she would have to witness this, I wonder if she would have had cause to pause. 

Conventional thinking at the time was that the Messiah would be the "new" David.  He would be a king after God's own heart ruling a kingdom here on earth.  It was envisioned that he would be king and rule justly and live to a ripe old age and then die a natural death and be buried, just like David.  Persecution, suffering, they were not part of the equation. 

No parent ever envisions the worst for their children.  No parent wants to see their child suffer or make wrong choices or worse, that the child dies before the parent.  That is never part of the future that we envision for our children!  We envision the very best!  And though sometimes we can explain their choices, sometimes what happens to our children is a complete mystery!  We don't know what the future holds!  Why do they turn out the way they do with all of the likes and dislikes and quirks and individual personality?  The same set of parents raises the same set of children yet each turns out differently.  That is truly the mystery!

If that is how it is for us as parents imagine what it is like for God!  Each and every one of us created, each and every one his child, yet each and every one unique and different.  God envisioning the very best for each of us.  God also knowing though that pain and suffering will come in to each and every human life, to each and every one of his children.  It is a part of the warp and weave of life here on earth. 

No wonder he created a plan to be able to claim his children again!  No wonder he chose the mystery of childbirth-the creation of a baby in order to fulfill his plan.  God knew that there would be suffering and pain involved yet he also knew that there would be great joy that would come as well! 

God is the ultimate parent and he envisions the very best.  Yet sometimes a child will suffer.  It must be difficult to watch sometimes.  Yet that is the mystery of children, each one individual, each one with free will.  Will they make the right choice?  That is the question and that is the mystery.  It is the coolest mystery that we as parents will never fully understand!  That is exactly how it is supposed to be because that is a part of the mystery of life!  Just like Mary, we made the courageous choice to see it through, not fully understanding what that choice might entail but believing the very best for our children and their future.  We said yes to the mystery!  I for one am glad that I said yes!  I think just about every parent would say the same thing!  Life truly is a mystery!

Not Much to Write Home About

Ecclesiastes-the definitive book on pointless striving!  Here's the gem from chapter 2 in The Message paraphrase that inspired the blog post title this morning:

"Call me 'the Quester.'  I've been king over Israel in Jerusalem.  I looked most carefully into everything, searched out all that is done on this earth.  And let me tell you, there's not much to write home about."

And here is another little gem from chapter 1:

"What was will be again, what happened will happen again.  There's nothing new on this earth.  Year after year it's the same old thing...Nobody remembers what happened yesterday. And the things that will happen tomorrow?  Nobody'll remember them either.  Don't count on being remembered." 

In other words.  History can and does repeat itself.  Why?  Because lessons learned by a previous generation are forgotten.  And we have an arrogant blind spot-we think that we are much better than previous generations.  We're brighter, smarter, we won't make the same mistakes that they made!  So, if that is the case, then why do we have Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements here in the United States?  If we are so much smarter, and we learned past lessons so well, then why do we have the "great recession?"  (Cause heaven forbid we call it what it is-a national and world wide depression.)

I bring this up because I just finished reading a Teddy Roosevelt biography last week and I was struck by how similar the scenarios were to what is going on now.  There was an interesting comment by the author about Teddy's opposition to monopolies.  He wasn't opposed to the accumulation of wealth, he had a problem with how the power that came along with that wealth was used.  It really comes down to ethics and morals and the principle of loving your neighbor as yourself.  The events in the book took place at the beginning of the 20th century and now, here we are at the beginning of the 21st century and we are grappling with the same issues yet again!  We forgot the lessons learned and here we are again, nothing new or different-repeating the same scenario just at a different time and with different individuals.

Life makes a strong case for the importance of knowing history and for reading your Bible!  The Bible reminds us of how important it is to treat each other well.  For Christians it tells a much greater story than that because it tells us about Jesus and how God sent him to complete a mission that could only be accomplished by the Son of God.  The hope is there contained in the book for a better way, no doubt!  But it also is a very practical book-it is a hands on book.  It contains stories of flawed people who sometimes got it right and sometimes got it wrong.  It reminds us that struggle and pain are part and parcel of living on this side of heaven.  But it also teaches us to have hope, to have faith and to love others and treat them fairly.  It's like a book that screams "read this and learn from our mistakes so you don't make the same mistakes!"

The vast majority look at it either as a collection of myths, or they open it when going through times of crisis but they don't read it on a daily basis as a means to learn how to live a better life.  It really is a wonderful guide if you take the lessons to heart!

I am begging you-if you don't read the Bible on a daily basis-make a decision, today, to start, TODAY!  Start with Psalms, start with Proverbs, start with the Gospels, doesn't matter-just pick a spot and start reading!  Use a translation that you can easily understand-read and absorb and underline and write notes, whatever works for you!  Just start!  You would be amazed at how much information is contained in this one book and how practical it is in your life, now, today!  You will find, my darling readers and friends, that the more you read, the more you will think "that is something worth writing home about!"